Amy Johnson `03
B.A. Psychology
Completed a master's in Library Science at the State University of New
York at Buffalo; recently appointed director of the Wilcox
Public Library, Elk County, Pennsylvania
"I was extremely involved in undergraduate research at Behrend, and most of my experiences came from working with Dr. Dawn Blasko, associate professor of psychology. Starting my sophomore year, I began working with her on an interdisciplinary project called Visualization Assessment and Training (VIZ), a Web site that tests our ability to mentally manipulate objects. This became an ongoing project for me, and my senior thesis came about from it. My work with VIZ let to presentations at several conferences, including ones in San Francisco, New Orleans, and Atlanta, as well as at Behrend.
Having my work published and presenting the results of various studies made a huge impact on my being accepted into grad school. Undergraduates at large universities are not given the opportunity to conduct research as often as we were able to at Behrend, and I think that is something that impresses selection committees. Going to conferences was a great thing also, as you get to meet people in your field and see the most current research out there. Behrend also provides excellent travel reimbursements for students who are presenting research at a conference. In grad school, I could get a travel reimbursement to cover the cost of airfare for one conference. Behrend covered airfare, hotel, and per diem for food for me to go to three conferences.
As a result of that first project, I started working with Dr. Blasko on an evaluation project through Penn State Erie's Center for Organizational Research and Evaluation (CORE). CORE has a small office on campus and they hire psychology students as research assistants. I got a chance to do a lot of fieldwork, and it's always good to get out of the classroom and see how what we're learning applies to the real world.
In my last semester I was the teaching assistant for Dr. Blasko's Introduction to Research Methods class, which was a wonderful learning experience. It gave me great insight into the time and effort teachers put into their classes and gave me a chance to try out that role."